Sports

Bob Wolfley | SportsDay

Running game will help trigger big plays

Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is OK with the quantity of running plays his offense has called this season, but he thinks the quality needs to improve. And, he says, when the quality of the runs improves, the quality of the passing game will improve along with it

"When you get to eight games, whether you have an identity or not, one is kind of made for you," Rodgers said Tuesday during his weekly radio show on WAUK-AM (540) with reporter Jason Wilde. "As we look at some of the midway statistics, I'm probably on pace to the have most attempts and the most completions in my career. When I did look at those in the last couple of days, I did come to the conclusion, without looking at the stats, that we have probably passed it more than we have in my five years as a starter.

"Quantity is important. We want to have a certain amount of runs every game to keep them honest," Rodgers said. "But I have to say the quality of them has not been anywhere where we'd like them. We chart explosive runs and passes. And passes are 16-plus (16 yards or more) that are listed as explosive and 12-plus for runs. There have not been a lot of 12-pluses this year, and I think that has directly affected the lack of 16-plusers in the passing game. We have probably had less of those than in the past as well. Our yards per attempt passing the ball are down from last season and I think a lot of that is due to the type of coverages we're seeing. Teams, like Jacksonville, are coming in and expecting their four-man rush to get to the passer, but also six- and seven-man boxes to stop the run. They have been doing a good job with that.

"We've got to run the ball better," Rodgers said. "If we can do that, then we are going to have the opportunity to make some of those play-action gains, make some of those gains with big plays over the top."

Some fans were displeased with the Green Bay's performance against Jacksonville, but not Rodgers.

"I felt good about it," Rodgers said. "I felt good about where we were at. I felt good about the fact that we were 5-3, coming back with three straight wins and looking forward to the second half of the season. If we just duplicate what we did in the second half, 10-6 should be good enough to get in the playoffs and anything can happen from there. We put ourselves in a position, after an adverse start to the season, to make a run at the playoffs. We have put ourselves in a position to really control our own destiny here. That's exciting."

Setting the odds

What do the Milwaukee Brewers, Arizona Diamondbacks, Baltimore Orioles and Oakland Athletics have in common?

They were given 25-to-1 odds of winning the 2013 World Series by pregame.com.

The Detroit Tigers, who were swept by the San Francisco Giants in the World Series, were given the best odds of winning it next season, at 7-1. The Houston Astros have the biggest odds at 150-1. Houston moves out of the NL Central to the AL West starting in 2013.

Last year at this time, the Brewers were made a 22-1 shot to win the 2012 World Series by bodog.com. The Giants were at 16-1.

On the outside

In the Sporting News magazine NBA preview issue, the Bucks are picked to finished third in the Central Division and out of the playoffs.

The Pacers and Bulls are picked to finish ahead of Milwaukee in the Central.

The magazine projects these eight teams to make the playoffs in the East: Miami, Boston, Indiana, Chicago, New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia and Washington.

It picks Miami over Boston in the East and Oklahoma City over the Los Angeles Lakers in the West. It has Miami beating Oklahoma City for the championship.

"It's going to be close," writer Sean Deveney says about the Bucks' playoff chances. "There are enough teams that have made a leap in the East - Brooklyn, Washington, New York - to make the playoff picture more crowded than it was last season, and that could ultimately be the Bucks' undoing. Still, they should be around a .500 team, if not a few games better, and that will at least put them in the running for a playoff spot into April."

Swept away

Nationally, the Giants four-game sweep of the Tigers in the 2012 World Series attracted the smallest television audience for any World Series with an average rating of 7.6 and 12.7 million viewers.

The average rating for the '12 Series (7.6) was 10% lower than the previous low (8.4) set in 2010 Series between the Giants and the Rangers, which went five games.

In the Milwaukee market, Giants-Tigers Series averaged a 7.6, or about 68,560 households, the second-lowest recorded for this market. The '10 series was the lowest with a 6.8 average or about 61,300 households.

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